An example of tone correcting apparatuses which correct tones of images is a lightness (value) correcting apparatus which is described in Patent Document 1. The lightness correcting apparatus described in Patent Document 1 divides an image into some areas, and calculates a parameter on the basis of average luminance of the respective divided areas, so as to make a gamma correction.
A method for extracting a human skin area on the basis of color information and correcting a color of the human skin area into a desired skin color on the basis of a parameter determined in advance (for example, Patent Document 2) is used as a method for correcting a tone of a figure image. Patent Document 3 describes an image processing method for processing an image by using a face detecting unit. With the image processing method described in Patent Document 3, the face detecting unit obtains face area image data SH, and determines an image state such as backlight on the basis of a characteristic value of SH. A desired color skin image and an original image are weighted by weighting coefficients obtained by using the determined image state and they are added, so that the image process is executed. Further, Patent Document 4 describes an image processing method which corrects density so that a density value of a face area falls within a target range.
Further, Patent Document 5 describes an image processing method for determining a correction parameter on the basis of image information attached to an image to be corrected so as to execute an image process. Patent Document 5 describes that a gamma correction value is determined on the basis of reduced image (preview) data of an input image and thus a suitable image correcting process can be executed for a short time.    Patent Docent 1: JP-A 10-150566 (paragraphs 0013-0014)    Patent Document 2: JP-A 11-267937 (paragraphs 0006-0008)    Patent Document 3: JP-A 11-328359 (paragraphs 0016-0023)    Patent Document 4: JP-A 2000-196890 (paragraph 0005)    Patent Document 5: JP-A 2000-137805 (paragraphs 0017-0018)